There is something about Wagner orchestral anthologies that, even today, prompts in me a certain strain of primal excitement – an anticipation, perhaps, of reliving the astonishment I felt on first hearing the Overtures and Preludes to Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Tannhauser. And here they are yet again, warmly dispatched by an ardent Wagnerian who has already impressed us with his complete Teldec recordings of Tristan (9/95), Parsifal (10/91) and The Ring (10/93 and 10/94).
I much preferred this particular compilation to Barenboim’s earlier Chicago Wagner miscellany (on Erato, and devoted to ‘bleeding chunks’ from The Ring). The Flying Dutchman Overture has plenty of urgency and I was warmed by a lavishly Stokowskian string portamento just prior to the final climax (at 10'42''). Tannhauser’s solemn opening is taken at a very broad tempo, and yet the main body of musical activity (“from the world of Mount Venus”, to quote Marion Bless’s intelligent annotation) surges forth with considerable aplomb. Lohengrin’s First Act Prelude arches to pleasingly homogeneous brass (something of a rarity in Chicago – at least on disc), whereas the Prelude to Act 3 sounds just a fraction too fast. On the other hand, the Meistersinger Prelude, although sonorous and sensitively phrased, could have benefited from an extra shot of adrenalin. Best of all is the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod, a rapt, lovingly expressed and beautifully controlled reading and proof beyond doubt that Daniel Barenboim is among the most sympathetic Wagner conductors of the 1990s.'